Free hosts and 404 traffic

[wankee]

I'm looking at a free host right now who doesn't use banners or any other kind of forced ads on my pages -- instead, they take my 404 traffic. I know that traffic can be used to make a few more bucks......but what I'm wondering is, what's the catch? There's gotta be something about taking my 404 traffic that I could regret later (other than not being able to use it myself).

[Chilihost]

The problem with freehosts is that they have to pay for their bandwidth somehow, by headers/footers, by stealing your traffic, by filtering and sending certain traffic to dialers, by "accidentally" deleting your site, by "becoming overwhelmed by the bandwidth needs that their servers could not diplay your page so it thought it was a 404 and redirected it", etc, etc....

You get what you pay for and with a free host you are not paying, so you will get your traffic stolen in one way or another. There is a reason almost every free host is banned from most TGP sites like thehun, as well as every linklist site, topsite, etc...the owners of these sites know that freehosts come and go, and just before they go they redirect like mad, sometimes to some really nasty places too!

You have to learn that this is a business like any other, you have to invest in order to make money. Invest in hosting, content and a domain name and you will be around for more than just a few months!

cheers,
Luke

[wankee]

Right, I realize all that, but I don't have any money right now to invest in a site (seriously, I did some laundry today for the first time since December, that's how rough it's been). As soon as I can afford to I'll register a few domain names and grab some hosting and fresh content -- but until then, I'm working with what I can, figure I'll probably have to do the site in my spare time until it earns me a decent amount of income (if it earns enough income).

So......I'm looking at a bannerless host for starters (they're established and reviews haven't been bad), and I'm wondering what the downside is of losing my 404 traffic, other than the obvious.

[Chilihost]

It sounds like you are already decided, so go for it, I am sure the freehost owners will appreciate the extra income you bring them.

cheers,
Luke

[wankee]

um...no I hadn't, actually. I just didn't know, and thought I could ask.

sorry if I've said or done something I shouldn't have, it wasn't intentional...

[Chilihost]

Mate, don't be sorry, its always good to ask questions, I just have a very negative view on freehosts from personal experience and from having a lot of clients join my hosting after getting seriously screwed by freehosts (they have had to drop their domain name, all existing galleries, lose their traffic & totally change their online "identity" because they were banned by most places for using a freehost which redirected to really nasty dialers or spyware).

cheers,
Luke

[Dzinerbear]

I think what Chillihost is trying to point out is that if you opt for a free host now, although that's all you can afford, you might regret it later because he's seen people screwed so badly by a free host that they basically have to dump their domains and start over because no one will deal with them and no search engine will crawl them.

I'm dealing with a free host issue right now where the host has placed a script on the site's button to enter the "good" content and they're whisking away the traffic to a bunch of titty sites.

In answer specifically to your question, I don't know of any downside to the 404 traffic issue except that if the host isn't thinking they're getting enough traffic, they might pull a stunt of some kind to increase your 404 traffic.

Good luck
Michael